In Spain, meanwhile, Serrano, Duke de la Torre, was enjoying his long-sought-for ambition of being supreme in the country, whilst General Prim was President of the Council of Ministers. The Duchess of la Torre made an ineffectual attempt to gather a Court around her at La Granja; but a palace made after the essentially royal abode of Versailles, with its countless well-kept alleys and its many panoramas of fountains adorned with allegorical scenes and figures, did not lend itself to anything but the stately entourage of a royal Court.
Whilst the Republican party grew in power in the Parliament, the Generals who had made the revolution sighed after a monarchy.
The Duke of Montpensier, the brother-in-law of the ex-Queen, might have had a good chance as candidate to the throne, and he was supported by Topete and the three Liberal Generals; but Spain could not forget his treachery and ingratitude to Isabella by joining with her enemies against her, and he found he could gain no real support from the country. And this coldness became more marked after the tragedy in which he was the chief actor made a dreadful stain on Court history.
It will be remembered that Prince Henry of Bourbon, the brother of the ex-King, whom Isabella had personally preferred to the husband she was finally obliged to accept, and who married, in 1849, Helena, daughter of the Count of Castellvi, had been removed from his position of a General of the army, to which he had been appointed by his cousin, and expatriated for a writing which was very insulting to the Queen.
Having thus associated himself with republicanism, Prince Henry became the source of many disloyal publications against the Queen and her Ministers, and when the blow was struck for the dethronement of Isabella, he openly welcomed the revolution.
The final opinions which caused the tragic ending to his life were expressed in an article entitled “The Montpensiers,” and this so enraged the candidate to the throne that he called out the author of the pamphlet in a duel, and a wave of horror swept over the Court of Spain when the ex-King’s brother thus met his death at the hand of the Duke of Montpensier.
The funeral of the Prince was solemnized with all the insignia of his rank as Lieutenant-Colonel and the owner of the Collar of Charles III., and with the rites due to a Freemason of high office. He was buried in the Escorial, and it is said that his remains will be finally removed from the simple niche where they now lie to the imposing tomb of “the Infants.”
Another tragedy befell the family of the ex-Queen of Spain in December, 1871. On May 13, 1868, the Infanta Isabella, the eldest daughter of Queen Isabella II., married Count Frederick Girgenti, who created a most favourable impression in the country by the valiant way he fought in the Battle of Alcolea under the Marquis of Novaliches.
But the brave young Prince was subject to epileptic fits, and one day in December, 1871, to the horror of his wife, he shot himself in Lucerne. The poor man lived for some hours, tended by his sorrowing wife. But neither love nor science could avail in such a case, and the Infanta Isabella found herself a widow at the age of twenty. However, the Infanta never allowed sorrow to kill her sympathy for her compatriots, and to go to Spain is to find that no philanthropic scheme or project is considered complete without the patronage of the Infanta Isabella.